


close encounters

by doxian



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alien/Human Relationships, Aliens, Chocolate Box Exchange, Developing Relationship, F/F, Outer Space, Phasing, Science Fiction, Sharing a Body, Suggestive Themes, Xeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-22
Updated: 2017-02-22
Packaged: 2018-09-23 13:22:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9659273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doxian/pseuds/doxian
Summary: It isn't as if Xyd adds to her load in any way, being essentially weightless. Sometimes Yana isn't sure that the alien understands what weightmeans- the concept of it, certainly, but not its irresistible physicality, not the inexorable drag of gravity pulling the body down towards the surface of a planet.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cockaigne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cockaigne/gifts).



> my recipient said that they like human encounters with the alien or supernatural, and smut. i hope this delivers!

"You're pretty slow, aren't you? Are all humans as slow as you?" 

Yana snorts, even though she isn't sure that her companion can hear her like this. 

"You'd be slow, too, if you were wearing 110lbs of gear and carrying 50lbs more," she grunts, continuing her steady, sure ascent up to the top of the communications tower, climbing the steel rungs fixed into the side of it hand over hand. 

Xyd has manifested just enough of herself to hold onto Yana's right forearm through her spacesuit, the vaporous thrum of the rest of her incorporeal form impossible to ignore. The rest of her extends into the night sky, flutters colourful like a streamer on a bicycle. 

"If I'm too slow for you why don't you just fly the rest of the way yourself? I'm not being paid to be your chauffeur, anyhow."

Xyd hums - a strange, fluting thing that Yana might have likened to the call of a bird if any species of bird on earth possessed the vocal cords capable of crafting such a sound. 

"I prefer this," Xyd chirps finally, the grip she has on Yana's arm seeming to tighten a minuscule amount. 

Yana shrugs.

"Suit yourself." It isn't as if Xyd adds to her load in any way, being essentially weightless. Sometimes Yana isn't sure that the alien understands what weight _means_ \- the concept of it, certainly, but not its irresistible physicality, not the inexorable drag of gravity pulling the body down towards the surface of a planet. 

She hauls herself and her equipment up the last rung, making her way over to the satellite dish at a confident, comfortable stride. 

Xyd lets go of her once they reach the top in favor of soaring over the tower's apex, expanding momentarily into a corona before shrinking again into a shape vaguely resembling a person, coming to rest beside Yana in front of the base of the dish. 

Yana sits. She sets her pack beside her and pops open the control panel. Meanwhile, Xyd floats, her "feet" not touching the building underneath them. 

"The stars are beautiful tonight!" Xyd's translucent, white form flickers through what appears to be all the yellows and oranges in the color spectrum. Her hair billows upwards, even though there's no wind.

"You gonna help or not?" Yana demands, not paying any attention to her comment.

Xyd hums again, but it's a distinctly more disgruntled one this time, warped like a voice put through a distortion device. 

"You need to learn how to smell the roses once in a while, Yana," she grumbles. She doesn't enter the machine immediately, though, and Yana is readying herself to scold her flighty partner again, but there turns out to be no need. Xyd shimmers faintly, and then she's phasing into the dish's stem, vanishing within it. 

"Psh, you don't even have a sense of smell," Yana says, delivering the retort to the empty platform. 

They make quick work repairing the breakage that had been hindering the base's communications. With Xyd manoeuvring the finer pieces of machinery from the inside, the task takes half the time it would've had Yana been working on her own. Once they're done, Xyd shivers out of the structure again, re-materializing as Yana replaces all of her equipment in her pack. 

Instead of getting back onto the ladder, Yana sits on the edge of the building, letting her legs dangle. 

Xyd makes an enquiring sort of noise. 

"You're right, the stars _are_ pretty," Yana says. "I figured we could stay and enjoy them for a while, now that we're all the way up here." 

Xyd happily strobes yellow again, manifests just enough of herself to wrap around Yana's bicep and hovers over her shoulders. They watch the sky in companionable silence. 

—

The corridors are buzzing when they arrive back at base. It's dinnertime, so most of the traffic is from the various hubs of the complex to the cafeteria. Yana joins them, letting herself get pulled along with the swell of people. 

Their base is buried within a network of caves, far enough underground that the dangers of the surface can't reach them. Yana has been stationed here, on a planet lightyears away from her own, for just under a year. It isn't a job she ever saw herself taking, but so far it's definitely been better than toiling on building sites or picking up security guard work back home on earth. The planet - remote, desert-like, so frequently beset by storms that the surface is largely inhospitable by humans - leaves much to be desired, but even that isn't much of a deterrent. As sentimental as it might sound, one of the only things Yana misses is the daily minutiae of regular life, but it's not enough of a push for her to return. At least not for a few more years. 

Yana hears a voice calling her name almost as soon as she walks in. 

"You're back early. A quick job, then?"

Whenever Yana catches sight of Deb, one of the many scientific researchers here, her impression is always more of a cloud of hair than of a person. 

"It was quicker than expected," Yana replies as Deb flounces over. "I had help."

Xyd, who had tagged along with Yana all the way up until this point, fizzes proudly. Yana can imagine her puffing her chest out as a human. 

Deb smiles, her expression turning into a smirk as she notices the way Xyd is half-phased into Yana's back. 

"Really? Is that why you went with her, Xyd—?" And Deb pronounces her complete name - slammed-together consonants and bird-like vocalisations and all - too quick for Yana to catch. 

Xyd emits an anxious, drawn-out whistle. "Of course! I'm very helpful!" 

Deb is looking past Yana at the wavering beam of light behind her body, the corner of her mouth twitching in amusement like she's making fun. Whatever she might be teasing Xyd about, though, is going right over Yana's head. Not that she really cares. At the moment she's more preoccupied by the thought of food. 

"Are you coming?" Yana nods towards the queues already forming at the counters. "You are here to get dinner, right?" 

"Yep," Deb says. Yana begins to think that her attention has been sufficiently diverted, but then she looks at Xyd again. "Care to join us? I know you don't eat, but if you'd like the company—"

"That's okay!" Xyd is already extricating herself from around Yana, who notices the absence immediately. "I should get going." 

"Right, you must have plenty to do," Yana is saying, but Xyd is already dissolving through the ceiling and out of sight. 

This time it's Deb who urges Yana to hurry up, taking hold of her arm and pulling. By the time they get their food and find somewhere to sit, the space is crowded with people. 

"You need to keep me up to date with these things," Deb says, slurping her soda and pointing at Yana accusatorially. 

"What things," Yana says, taking a bite of chilli. Like most of the cooking here, it's bland. It tastes overwhelmingly of beans and nothing else, not even any seasoning, but it's acceptable. "All the repairs I have to do on the station every day? Just check the logs if you're that curious." 

" _No_." And now Deb's finger is in Yana's face. "I'm talking about whatever you're doing with Xyd."

"I thought we just went over that? Xyd helps me sometimes. You probably know better than me what the aliens here do with themselves all day." 

There aren't many that seem to have ventured into the base, but the ones who have have been essential in the base's continued presence on the planet. Xyd had shown up a few months after Yana had arrived, and she had been coming and going ever since. The creatures themselves don't really factor into the conducted research, but Deb seems to have taken a special interest in them and their behaviours. 

"Hmm." Deb stops pointing in favor of leaning her chin in her hand to look at Yana. "Have you ever seen any of them touch each other? Or us?"

"They're made of light," Yana says, frowning. "They could be merging into each other constantly for all I know."

"Nope," says Deb, wagging her finger now. "They never touch or phase into other sentient beings. Or, well. They do, but rarely. Why do you think that is?" 

"Xyd phases into me all the time," Yana protests, and then pauses at how that sounds. "With parts of my body, I mean." That sounds worse. "You know what I mean." 

"Again: why do you think that is?" The smirk is back again in full force, and Yana wishes they weren't sitting opposite each other so she could elbow her. 

"Deb, come on," she rolls her eyes. "Digging for petty gossip, seriously?" 

"Hey, I have to get my kicks somehow! Examining storm dust particles is fascinating stuff, but this is a different kind of fascinating." Her smile is eager, like Yana is a specimen of a material she's never encountered before. "Just give it some thought."

"Sure, yeah," Yana says, taking another bite of her food and resolving to forget about the topic immediately. 

—

Yana heads to the showers late. They're pretty much deserted when she gets there - all the better, the compound is always so swarming with people that it can be difficult for Yana to snatch any time to herself.

She's already running the water by the time she realizes that she's not alone.

At first she assumes that the flash is one of the lights malfunctioning, but the color is all wrong - a pink-purple that's nothing like the uniform white fluorescence of the rest of the lights. And then the new light source _moves_ , and Yana heaves a sigh of tired recognition. 

"Xyd? Is that you?"

Yana has never been particularly shy about her body - years of communal living and locker room showers had seen to that - but she can't help but feel a little self-conscious as the rosy glow blooms over the top of her shower cubicle.

"What are you doing here? Pretty sure you don't need to get clean."

"Nakamura told me that bathing together is a bonding activity!" 

Yana sighs again. She thought that cultural misunderstandings were bad enough on earth, but inter-species ones are infinitely more troublesome. 

"That's more of an intimate relationship activity to me." She moves to turn off the water. She doesn't really want to stand around talking to her partner naked like this. But before she can, Xyd is filling the narrow space with brightness.

"Our relationship is pretty intimate, don't you think?" 

Xyd is positively flush with energy - it's flowing off of her in waves, warming Yana's skin. Yana half-expects her to shine even stronger, grow until she's filling the entire room, but instead she shrinks down and resolves herself into a humanoid shape again - much more detailed than her usual faceless silhouette. She smiles, resting a hand on Yana's cheek. Her fingers are smooth and cool, like glass.

Yana is suddenly reminded of what Deb said in the cafeteria about _touch_. 

"Xyd, what do you think our relationship _is_ , exactly?" 

Xyd lets out one of her bizarrely high-pitched inquisitive sounds. It's so at odds with her human appearance that she ends up coming off as even more alien than when she was merely a shaft of light. 

"We're courting, obviously! I'm surprised you even had to ask." 

_Oh._

She's so close, but all Yana can feel of her is her hands - no breath, none of that sense of presence another physical body typically possesses. If Yana reached out to card her fingers through Xyd's hair, she's certain she'd be met with nothing but effervescence. 

It's perhaps because of Yana's preoccupation with Xyd's insubstantiality that she's completely blindsided when Xyd leans forward and kisses her. 

Unlike her hands, Xyd's lips have give, even though there's no breath, no moisture. It's not enough, though: Yana puts out her hands in an automatic reaction only for her to be met with thin air instead of Xyd's torso. When she opens her eyes, she can look through the shimmer of Xyd's form to the opposite side of the shower cubicle. 

Xyd pulls away, vibrating in a way that might be excitement, might be nerves. Yana feels as though she's just got kissed by a very small sun. 

Yana swallows, and wonders how much effort Xyd is putting into mimicking human gestures. The members of her species express themselves through light and sound, not smiles or kisses. 

The shower is still running, sending water cascading over Yana's large, hefty body. 

The form Xyd has chosen for herself this time is more detailed than the faceless silhouettes she'd so often used before. Conventionally attractive, even. A willowy figure and a heart-shaped face with a pert nose. 

"Wait," Yana says. "If we're going to do this, I want to do it your way."

"What?" Xyd doesn't quite manage the facial cues for "confused", her face only shifting minutely from its sweet, placid expression. The shrill, surprised squeak she makes is a noise Yana is familiar with, though. 

Yana gestures from Xyd back to herself. "This. I'm pretty sure your people don't usually kiss." 

"Oh. I." For the first time since she'd interrupted Yana's shower - hell, for the first time since Yana had _met_ her - Xyd seems unsure of herself. "Do you really want to do that?"

"I appreciate—this," Yana says, gesturing at Xyd's form again, at how Xyd had actually tried to meet her halfway, for once, "but I think we were fine how we were before, too." 

"Okay," Xyd says. She reaches out, wraps her hands around Yana's forearms. "I'll show you."

She vanishes into nothingness again. This, Yana is more accustomed to. This makes more sense than the carefully engineered form created to look like what Xyd probably expected Yana to like. 

Yana closes her eyes and lets herself get enveloped, just as she lets the water continue to cascade down over her. Xyd draws closer, closer, until she isn't so much enveloping Yana as she is thrumming under Yana's skin, filling all of her insides. 

"There's so much of you," Xyd murmurs, and she sounds intoxicated. Her words emanate from Yana's stomach all the way down to her fingertips. "So many mechanisms." 

Yana thinks about Xyd vanishing into the satellite dish, futzing with the wiring from the inside. She thinks about Xyd manifesting her hands while they're merged like this. She swallows, again, but the thrill going down her spine is arousal as well as fear. Not that she thinks Xyd would ever hurt her. It's just that the possibility is there. 

A breeze flows over Yana's body - Xyd, sighing - and Yana has to lean against the wall. She shuts her eyes. Xyd seems to get even warmer, like gentle flames licking through her. Yana toys with the idea of touching herself, but that almost seems as if it would take away from the experience of being on the verge of melting.

Slowly, Xyd pulls away, and Yana starts to feel like a person again, not a multitude of candlelights come to life. And then they're detached from each other completely. 

Yana reaches out and turns off the water. Grabs her towel and starts rubbing her shoulders and her shaved head dry without a word. She's still surrounded by Xyd, who's taken on a redder shade, now. 

"Was that okay?" the alien asks, fluttering anxiously. 

"Yes," Yana says. She wraps the towel around herself. "I would rank it up there among the most okay things I've experienced. I'm just getting fed up of standing in a shower stall while the water gets cold, is all." 

She starts walking to the door. Xyd, curling along the floor somewhat dejectedly instead of soaring up to the ceilings like she usually does, doesn't follow until Yana turns back around to look at her.

"Well? Aren't you coming?" 

Xyd perks right back up again at the invitation, and Yana is followed by a haze of blissfully kaleidoscopic vapor all the way back to her room.


End file.
